Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Change of plans for getting rid of cable

To review the steps we have done to get rid of cable as outlined when we were Preparing to cut cable

COMPLETED: Step 1: Run a coax cable line and power outlet in the attic on the southeast corner of my house. I used TV Fool to determine the right place in my house to run this line for an in attic antenna.

COMPLETED: Step 2: Install an in attic amplified antenna to pick up local HD stations. I am currently looking at the Terk FDTVO Antenna.

CHANGED/COMPLETED: Step 3: Instead of buying an $80 HD Roku box - I've decided to purchase one of the Cyber Monday deals on Blu-ray players which also support Netflix and Hulu Plus.

SCHEDULED: Step 4: Switch from Internet, Phone, and TV from my cable provider to Internet and Phone from Windstream.

Step 5: Sign up for Hulu Plus and Netflix.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Antenna based TV is great!

Happy Thanksgiving y'all. As we prepare to cut cable...I installed a Terk FDTVO in the attic this Thanksgiving break. As I said last time, first I did an address check at TV Fool. It gave me an in depth listing of all the TV Channels available from my house through a small antenna, an attic mounted antenna, and a roof mounted antenna. The graph for my house looks like this:


Based on this, I needed to aim the antenna south, either slightly southeast or slightly southwest. I bought the Terk FDTVO because its multi-directional and pointing in one direction, we can get both the channels in the southeast and southwest directions. So, finding the southern most corner of the house, the Terk FDTVO took about 15-20 minutes to install. From the Terk there is a 10 ft coax cable line, then it plugs into the amplifier provided with the Terk, then it runs from the 3rd floor to the crawlspace and back up to the first floor to my cable splitters. I found the 3 cable lines we used in the house and attached those lines into the splitter with the antenna as the input.
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(My phone shown for size perspective)

After turning my TV to over the air rather than cable, My TV found 49 local channels. The Terk worked great. I turned on the LSU v Arkansas game and it looked great.
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That is a HD picture with quality better than Time Warner Cable for sure.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Preparing to cut the cable...

I am preparing to cut the cable in our house. Here is my plan.

Step 1: Run a coax cable line and power outlet in the attic on the southeast corner of my house. I used TV Fool to determine the right place in my house to run this line for an in attic antenna.

COMPLETE

Step 2: Install an in attic amplified antenna to pick up local HD stations. I am currently looking at the Terk FDTVO Antenna.

Step 3: Purchase and install two Roku boxes. Right now I am aiming for the Roku 2

Step 4: Switch from Internet, Phone, and TV from my cable provider to Internet and Phone from Windstream.

Step 5: Sign up for Hulu Plus and Netflix.

So, step 2 is next. Total, this takes our bill from $126 (discounted rate) to around $90 per month standard rate with an initial cost around $250 for step 1-5. I'll try to keep tabs on this project out here on my blog.